Download Standard 17, 18, and 19 EOCT Study Guide

Copyright © 2009 by the Georgia Department of Education. All rights reserved.
Standard 17: Analyze the causes and consequences of the Great Depression
The Interactions of Business Overproduction and Consumer Underconsumption
During the 1920s, the wealthy grew wealthier due in large measure to government fiscal policies that both
reduced business regulations and allowed the wealthy to keep more of their money. These reduced
regulations and low corporate taxes increased the profits of corporations and made their stocks more
valuable. At the same time, the poor and working classes lost the ability to buy products because their
wages stayed the same while prices rose. This reduction in consumer consumption resulted in business
overproduction and eventually caused business profits to decline. These factors were an important cause
of the Great Depression.
New methods of buying products, including the installment plan and buying on credit, became popular
during the 1920s. These methods encouraged consumers to buy more than they could afford and to go
into debt. Worst of all, banks loaned people money to buy stock with very little money down. The stocks
themselves became the collateral for the loan. This was called buying on margin. Rising stock prices and
the ability of ordinary people to buy stock on credit increased investment in the stock market and inflated
the price of stocks above their actual value. Then, by October 1929, the U.S. economy was beginning to
show signs of slowing down. Stockholders feared the economy was ending a period of prosperity and
entering a period of recession. This caused some investors to panic and sell their stocks. As more people
sold their stock, other people panicked and sold their stock as well, driving down their prices and causing
a stock market crash.
In turn, the stock market crash triggered other economic weaknesses and plunged the United States into
the Great Depression––a severe economic recession in the 1930s that affected all the world’s
industrialized nations and the countries that exported raw materials to them. Industry, trade, construction,
mining, logging, and farming decreased sharply. Business profits, tax revenues, and personal incomes did,
too.
STRATEGY BOX––The Oklahoma Road
And Grandpa Joad he cried.
He picked up a handful of land in his hand.
He said, “I’m stickin’ with my farm till I die.”
They fed him spareribs and coffee and soup and syrup,
And Grandpa Joad, he died.
We buried Grandpa Joad on the Oklahoma road
And Grandma on the California side.
from “The Ballad of Tom Joad” by Woody Guthrie
New machinery and improved farming techniques made American farmers very productive. By producing
more food each year, farmers thought they could earn more money. Instead, this overproduction helped
drive down the prices of their products and made it harder for them to make a profit. In response, farmers
tried producing even more food by taking out more loans to buy more land and farm equipment. As a
result, most farmers were very vulnerable to economic and environmental disasters when banks started
foreclosing on farms owned by farmers unable to repay their loans. To make matters worse, the Great
Plains states were experiencing a severe drought. When a series of severe dust storms hit the prairies, they
picked up the dirt loosened by the drought and the poor farming practices that had eroded the soil. This
ecological disaster was called the Dust Bowl. Dry conditions and high winds made farming impossible.
Tenant farmers and sharecroppers were among the hardest hit as their landlords evicted them and sold the
land. Over 500,000 Americans were left homeless. Many farmers from Oklahoma, Texas, and the
surrounding Dust Bowl states migrated to California in search of work.
Copyright © 2009 by the Georgia Department of Education. All rights reserved.
Widespread Unemployment
As profits fell and it became clear consumers would need to reduce spending, workers began to lose their
jobs. By 1932, the unemployment rate in the United States had reached 25%. Unemployed workers who
had no savings could not pay their debts, and many lost their homes. Homeless and unemployed people
settled in camps of shacks and tents in rundown areas. These camps became known as Hoovervilles,
named after Herbert Hoover, the U.S. president when the Depression started. Hooverville residents slept
in packing crates if they were lucky; if not, they slept on the ground. They begged for food from people
who still had jobs and housing.
Review Suggestions
To prepare for questions about the period from the 1930s to the 1960s, you should use your textbook to
review
• Stock Market Crash
• Dust Bowl
• Great Depression
• Hoovervilles
Standard 18: Describe Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal as a response to the Depression, and
compare the ways governmental programs aided those in need
Putting People to Work
One of Roosevelt’s major New Deal programs was the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). This was
established in 1933 to build dams and power plants along the Tennessee River and its tributaries. The
Tennessee Valley itself runs through seven states, so the project was very large. The TVA built dozens of
dams to control the environment by preventing disastrous floods. Each dam had its own power plants,
parks, and navigation aids, and this construction created hundreds of jobs for unemployed workers.
Second New Deal
The Second New Deal refers to the programs President Roosevelt instituted after his original New Deal
failed to completely fix the American economy. The National Labor Relations Act, better known as the
Wagner Act, was one of the first reforms of Roosevelt’s Second New Deal. This law established
collective bargaining rights for workers and prohibited such unfair labor practices as intimidating
workers, attempting to keep workers from organizing unions, and firing union members. The law also set
up a government agency where workers could testify about unfair labor practices and hold elections to
decide whether or not to unionize.
After passage of the Wagner Act, industrial workers began to unionize. The American Federation of
Labor (AFL) was hesitant to organize industrial unionism, because it was committed to craft-based
workers such as carpenters and railroad engineers. As a consequence, the Congress of Industrial
Organizations (CIO) was created to represent industrial workers who felt they were not being represented
by the AFL. The AFL and CIO clashed on and off before merging in 1955 to become the AFL-CIO that
exists today.
One of the most important actions of the Second New Deal was the Social Security Act, which was
passed in 1935. This law consisted of three components:
1. Old-age insurance for retirees aged 65 or older and their spouses, paid half by the employee
and half by the employer
2. Unemployment compensation paid by a federal tax on employers and administered by the
states
3. Aid for the disabled and for families with dependent children paid by the federal government
and administered by the states
Copyright © 2009 by the Georgia Department of Education. All rights reserved.
Eleanor Roosevelt
President Roosevelt’s wife, Eleanor, was very influential in her own right. She was interested in
humanitarian causes and social progress, and she was very vocal about them during her husband’s time in
the White House. She traveled all over the United States to observe social conditions so she could keep
the president informed as to the state of the nation. As a supporter of women’s activism, she was also
instrumental in convincing Roosevelt to appoint more women to government positions.
Roosevelt’s Political Challenges
During his 12-year presidency, Roosevelt faced many challenges to his leadership and had many critics.
Opponents of the New Deal came from all parts of the political spectrum. Some conservatives thought he
had made the federal government too large and too powerful and that it did not respect the rights of
individuals and property, while some liberals thought he had not gone far enough to socialize the
economy and eliminate inequality in America. Perhaps Roosevelt’s biggest critic was Senator Huey Long
of Louisiana. Long originally supported the New Deal, but he changed his mind and set his sights on
replacing Roosevelt as president. Long proposed for every American a home, food, clothes, and an
education, among other things.
In Europe, World War II started long before America entered it. To prevent Roosevelt from involving
America in what some saw as a European war, Congress passed a series of Neutrality Acts to make it
illegal to sell arms or make loans to nations at war. The fourth of these acts, passed in 1939 in recognition
of the Nazi threat to Western Europe’s democracies, permitted the sale of arms to nations at war on a
“cash and carry” basis. This meant that buyers would have to pay cash and send their own ships to
American ports to pick up the supplies, thereby keeping American ships from being sunk by the Germans.
The Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937, usually called the court-packing bill, was a law Roosevelt
proposed to give presidents the power to appoint an extra Supreme Court justice for every sitting justice
over the age of 70 ½. Roosevelt planned to use this bill’s powers to add more of his supporters to the
Supreme Court to uphold his New Deal programs, but the version of the law passed by Congress
weakened the power he desired.
Review Suggestions
To prepare for questions about the period from the 1930s to the 1960s, you should use your textbook to
review
• Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)
• Eleanor Roosevelt
• Second New Deal
• Huey Long
• Wagner Act
• Neutrality Acts
• Industrial Unionism
• Court-Packing Bill
• Social Security Act
Standard 19: Identify the origins, major developments, and domestic impact of World War II,
especially the growth of the federal government
Protesting Discrimination
In 1941, A. Philip Randolph, the founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, proposed a march
on Washington, D.C., to protest discrimination in the military and in industry. He called on African
Americans from all over the United States to come to Washington and join him. President Roosevelt,
afraid the march might cause unrest among whites, summoned Randolph to the White House and asked
him to call off the march. When Randolph refused, Roosevelt issued an executive order that called on
employers and labor unions to cease discrimination in hiring practices in industries related to defense. As
a result of Roosevelt’s actions, the march was canceled.
Copyright © 2009 by the Georgia Department of Education. All rights reserved.
Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath
On the morning of December 7, 1941, the navy of the Empire of Japan launched a surprise attack on the
U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Over 2,400 Americans were killed and 1,178 more were
wounded, 19 ships were damaged, and over 300 aircraft were destroyed. The Japanese attack took the
United States officially into World War II.
One effect of America’s entry into the war was alarm about the loyalty of Japanese Americans: 120,000
Japanese Americans lived in the United States, most of them on the West Coast. Fears of spies and
sabotage led to prejudice and sometimes violence against Japanese Americans. In the name of national
security, Roosevelt ordered all people of Japanese ancestry be moved from California and parts of
Washington, Oregon, and Arizona to rural prison camps. Although most of the people imprisoned in these
internment camps were Japanese Americans, there were also small numbers of German Americans and
Italian Americans imprisoned under the same law, as well as hundreds of Native Americans from Alaska.
Mobilization
After Pearl Harbor, 5 million men volunteered for military service, but more were needed to fight the war.
The Selective Service System expanded the draft, and 10 million more men joined the ranks of the
American armed forces. So great was the need of the military, a Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps was
formed to fill noncombat positions otherwise filled by men, freeing up the men for frontline duty.
The men needed tanks, planes, ships, guns, bullets, and boots. To equip the troops, the entire American
industry was dedicated to supplying the military. More than 6 million workers in the plants, factories, and
shipyards were women. With the men who once did these jobs now fighting overseas, women filled the
void. Women volunteered for this work even though they were paid on average only 60% as much as men
doing the same jobs. It was the hard work of people and the industrial might of the United States that
helped America win World War II.
As time went on, the war industry needed more raw materials. One way Americans helped the war effort
was through wartime conservation. Workers would carpool to work or ride bicycles to save gasoline and
rubber. People participated in nationwide drives to collect scrap iron, tin cans, newspaper, rags, and even
cooking grease to recycle and use in war production. Another way Americans conserved on the home
front was through the mandatory government rationing system. Under this system, each household
received a “c book” with coupons that were used to buy scarce items such as meat, sugar, and coffee. Gas
rationing was also used to help save gasoline for military use.
Allied Powers
• China
• France
• Great Britain
• Soviet Union
• United States
Axis Powers
• Germany
• Italy
• Japan
Major Events of World War II
Many battles were fought between the Allied nations and the Axis powers from 1939 to 1945. World War
II was truly a world war, with combat taking place on nearly every continent. This changed the way the
whole world looked at war. The two major theaters of the war were Europe and the Pacific Ocean.
Review the following details of four major World War II events.
• Lend-Lease––March, 11, 1941––Nine months before Pearl Harbor, Congress passed the LendLease Act and amended the Neutrality Acts so the United States could lend military equipment
and supplies to any nation the president said was vital to the defense of the United States.
Roosevelt approved $1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to Great Britain in October 1941. When the
United States entered World War II, $50 billion worth of equipment and supplies had already
been sent to Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and China.
Copyright © 2009 by the Georgia Department of Education. All rights reserved.
• Battle of Midway––June 4–7, 1942––Six months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the
U.S. Navy won a sea battle against the Japanese Navy that was a turning point in World War II.
The Japanese tried to trap and sink America’s remaining aircraft carriers and then take the
Midway Atoll, an American refueling station for ships and airplanes, but the United States
destroyed four Japanese aircraft carriers while losing only one American carrier. This kept the
Japanese from capturing Midway. This victory is regarded as the most important naval
engagement of the Pacific campaign of the war and, at the time, was a huge morale boost for
America. The Japanese Navy never recovered from this defeat, enabling the United States to gain
control of other strategic Pacific islands. From those islands, the United States was able to
overcome the geographical difficulty of resupplying its forces with food, medicine, weapons, and
other critical supplies needed to push westward toward the Japanese mainland.
• D Day––June 6, 1944––D Day was the code name for the first day of Operation Overlord, the
Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France. It remains the largest seaborne invasion in history, with
over 156,000 men crossing the English Channel in 6,939 vessels. The German troops occupying
France were caught almost completely by surprise and, although the Allies met heavy resistance
in small areas, the invasion went almost exactly according to plan. As a result of the operation’s
success, American and British forces were able to maintain a permanent beachhead in mainland
Europe to resupply their forces and push east to Germany. The geographical advantage gained by
the invasion marked the beginning of victory for the Allies in Europe.
• The Fall of Berlin––April–May 1945––The fall of Berlin was one of the final battles of the
European theater during World War II. Two Soviet army groups attacked Berlin from the east and
south, while a third attacked German forces north of Berlin. The Soviets lost 81,116 men taking
the city, while the Germans lost 458,080 trying to defend it. It was one of the bloodiest battles in
history. Adolf Hitler was in Berlin during the battle and, before it ended, he and many of his
followers committed suicide. The city’s defenders surrendered on May 2, but fighting continued
outside the city until the war ended on May 8. Much of the continued fighting was due to the
Germans trying to move westward so they could surrender to the Americans or British instead of
to the Soviets.
Atom Bomb
Allied leaders planning the war against Japan knew that once they defeated the Japanese navy in the
Pacific Ocean they would still have to invade Japan itself to end the war. They knew Japan still had a
huge army that would defend every inch of the homeland, and both sides could possibly lose millions of
people in the process. President Truman decided there was only one way to avoid an invasion of Japan
and still defeat them. He would use a brand-new weapon that no one had ever seen before: the atomic
bomb. The American government had developed two atomic bombs in a secret laboratory in Los
Alamos, New Mexico. The bombs were dropped on Japan in early August 1945. On September 2, 1945,
the Japanese surrendered, and World War II was finally over. The project’s code name was “The
Manhattan Project.”
The implications of developing and using atomic bombs in World War II were enormous. From a military
standpoint, it was clear that not only did the United States have a powerful weapon that no other country
had, but the American government was not afraid to use it. The Soviet Union quickly began developing
an atomic bomb of its own, an act that helped begin the Cold War. Also, nuclear power would soon be
used to power aircraft carriers and submarines. Scientifically and economically, the atomic bomb led to
nuclear power for civilian use, such as generating electricity for homes and businesses. Nuclear power is
also used in technologies such as positron emission tomography (PET) scans, which are used by
physicians to study the workings of the human body, including brain functions.
Copyright © 2009 by the Georgia Department of Education. All rights reserved.
Review Suggestions
To prepare for questions about the period from the 1930s to the 1960s, you should use your textbook to
review
• A. Philip Randolph
• Battle of Midway
• Pearl Harbor
• D Day
• Internment
• Battle of Berlin
• Mobilization
• Atom Bomb
• Wartime Conservation
• Los Alamos
• Rationing
• The Manhattan Project
• Lend-Lease